Doragh crosses the town square.; It is one of the few walkways in the city that is actually covered in cobblestone rather than packed dirt, but the recent lack of rain means that even the streets can be crossed without getting covered in mud. The dungeons are located in the basement of the city armory, just the other side of the square from the Lord Mayor’s house.

The door inside the barracks is closed but unlocked. A quick knock and the door actually creaks open a notch.

Doragh waits for ten breaths after knocking, listening for any sound that might indicate someone inside had heard him. When he gets no response, he slips his flail into his off hand and pushes open the door. Standing in the doorway he examines the interior of the room trying to figure out why there would be no guards on duty to keep an eye on the prison.

Doragh finds a small stone room, empty of any people but lined with old tapestries. Their age is evident in the number of tapestries festooned with Essalite imagery-prominent lines of purple, the Imperial Crown and the laurel of the Imperial Senate. There is a large desk with some wooden cabinets above it. Three chairs are sitting haphazardly around the desk. The floor is cut stones fitted like tiles. Three doors exit the room-two on the far wall and third on the wall to Doragh’s left.

Looking around the empty room, Doragh scowls at the lack of even a desk clerk to keep an eye on things. He makes no moves to be subtle, he checks the cabinets first, hoping to find some decent food to take to the prisoners. Then, stepping back around the desk, he moves to the lone door (previously on his left) and proceeds to knock and then after a moment of no response, he will attempt to open it before moving on to the next one.

I will assume to just keep the same rolls throughout this scene, unless you tell me otherwise. I don’t think it’s necessary to keep rolling the same checks over and over unless you call for it. :)

The cabinets contain various goods one might find in a workspace; a few sheets of paper for record-keeping (a rare commodity in Lytindown these days), some dishware and cups, a cloth bag containing what smells like dried fruits and set of keys.

The door is unlocked. When Doragh opens it, he finds a set of stairs heading down. He can hear voices coming up the stairs. What sounds like a laugh comes soon after.

Grabbing the bag of fruits, Doragh carefully shuts the cabinet and stuffs the fruit into his pack. better to have both his hand free for his pick, if he does need it. Since the first door seems to lead him right where he wants to go, Doragh walks down the steps, again making no effort to conceal his approach, but also not attempting to draw any attention to himself either. He watches for the source of the voices, trying catch the gist of the conversation as he closes in upon them.

I am assuming it is just the voices drifting up the stairs and not that the voices are drawing closer as I stand at the top of the steps. If they were coming closer, Doragh would actually just wait for them to come to him.

Yeah, I meant it as the voices were carrying up the stairs, though Doragh may have some difficulty telling that precisely.

The stairs end at a landing with a door across from it. The voices are clearly coming from the other side of the door. They seem to be discussing a game of some kind. Another round of laughter comes after someone shouts “No way, no way, you were bluffing? You didn’t even have the wheel!!”

The oddity of this setup has Doragh teetering between frustration with the guards and bemused confusion. He stands for a minute more outside of the door, listening. Finally, with a shake of his head, he decides the only way to really find out what is going on will be to start talking. So, he moves up to the door and raps on it loudly with the handle of his flail.

No worries. That was how I read it the first time, but sometimes I read too much into things and I realized it could be meant the other way. It was easy enough to jot down the note in case I had gotten the wrong intention from you.

The discussion surrounding the game continues. Once or twice, a ribald joke is made. As soon as the flail hits the wood, however, there is immediate silence. A voice from inside says “Boss? Is that you?”

Another voice says, sharply, “Idiot!! He wouldn’t knock. Who the hell is there?”

“Bounty Hunter, sent by Drophias to speak with the miserable excuses for guards that let Bulstrode escape.” Reaching out, he tries the handle, pushing open the door if it is unlocked. “Any chance you boys are interested in helping me find the information that I need?” Standing in the doorway with his flail held casually in one hand and his other resting easy on his pick, he looks over the men in the room with an impassive stare on his face. His red eye catches the light of the torches giving his stare an eerie quality.

There are five men in the room, all standing around a set of chairs they were presumably sitting at. A small side table sits in the center of the chairs. Scattered playing cards can be seen on the table. The room is low-ceilinged. There are five doors around the room, each made of solid wood held together with bands of metal. Two of the five doors are open.

Two of the men take a step backwards at Doragh’s appearance. Another one raises a dagger and points it at the imposing man, “Hey, I saw you walking through town earlier.”

A fourth man, wearing some sort of insignia on his tabard, speaks up, “These are my men you’re speaking about. Show some respect. What do you want of them?” From the way he gesturing, it’s clear that the men he means are part of the group of card players.

Doragh scowled into the room for a long silent minute. He spent that time considering all the implications of what he had been hearing.

And then he reached into his pack and pulled out the bag of dried fruit and tossed it onto the table as a smile spread across his face. “Then I suppose it won’t be necessary to bring them this after all.” Putting his flail back, Doragh moves over to the table and picks up a few of the cards and examines them as he speaks. “I am Doragh, or Redeye, one of those hired to hunt down Bulstrode. I want to know what I’m facing. I want to hear their tale, their thoughts on the crime scene and how a chained older man managed to best them. Drophias has a strange story, but offers no answers to the questions it leaves. I need those answers.” He sets the cards back down and turns his attention back to the officer who seems in charge.

One of the men who stepped backwards at Doragh’s appearance says, “It wasn’t normal. He Wasn’t normal. You can laugh at me if you want, that man was some kind of witch. As old as he was, he just…”

The man with the insignia puts up his hand to quiet the other man, “Doragh, I’m Bullvye. Have a seat. My men were doing what they were supposed to be doing. They made a mistake trying to recover the escapee themselves rather than raising the alarm, but Sir Drophias already punished them for that. If you came down here to find out what you need to know to be prepared to face this witch, I’ll be okay with you asking questions.”

Nodding to Bullvye, Doragh grabs one of the chairs and spins it around to sit in. He leans his head back and looks at the ceiling as if lost in thought. When he returns his attention to the one who had first spoken he shakes his head. I’m not going to laugh at you. The stars speak of greater powers beyond our understanding. But I suppose it will be best to start at the beginning. Tell me what you encountered when you first arrived at the Weaver’s home, guardsman.

Doragh’s understanding pleases the man, who sits down. Another of the five joins him as well. The others remain standing but listen.

The man who spoke continues, “We didn’t arrest him at his house. He was at the scene. The woman who lived there found him and ran. We were patrolling just a few blocks away. We heard her and ran to get her. She took us back to the house and Bulstrode was still there, eat…” he swallows and stutters, “e-eating the victim. No concern for us. He kind of glanced our way as if we passing on the street. I don’t think we reacted right away-I mean, it was really disgusting. But he just kept on….. Anyway, he sat there while we arrested him. He seemed in a kind of haze. I’ve seen that look before. A priest, one of those Spirit-Born Chanters from across the sea, came through my home town once when I was kid. He would recite this prayer with fast breaths over and over. It sent him into some kind of trance, I think he called it ecstasy. Well, his face looked like Bulstrode’s that day, like he was in some kind of ecstasy.”

“Anyway, we shackled him and led him out. We left the body there until someone could come clean it up, and took the old man to the prison. We got maybe four of five blocks before the change happened. His face went from calm to rage. He threw us both down and ran, ran like a man a third his age. We were stunned. I mean, who expects their grandfather to move like a young warrior all of a sudden. I don’t think we thought about reporting him or raising the alarm, we wanted to get him back, but he lost us in minutes. We should have said something then, but who would believe us? A 69-year old man in chains knocked us down?”

A frown sets into his face as the story comes to a close and Doragh again shifts his focus to some middle point, not seeming to be aware of the other occupants in the room for several minutes. “Witchery indeed, but whose?” He finally seems to return his thoughts to the present. He scans each occupant as he continues, expanding the scope of his questions to include all of those gathered. “Did any of you know Bulstrode personally, or his family? There was talk that he began acting strange after their death. Can any of you elaborate on that?”

“Well then.” Doragh pushes himself back up to his feet. “I must thank you for the assistance you’ve given. I certainly hope that you’ll get through your incarceration without too much difficulty.” He smirks at the whole lot of guards. “If you could do me the one last favor to point me in the direction of the neighbor, I’ll be leaving you to your game.”

Not sure if it would put me into the thread at Bulstrode’s house or not, but Doragh would want to go and visit the neighbor. Particularly since he didn’t hang around long enough at the Mayor’s to find out what the others were doing.

I am curious about what’s behind the other doors at the top of the steps, but I can’t imagine Doragh actually being nosy enough to open them just for curiosities sake. So I’ll just have to leave them be.

Doragh once again thanks the group of guards and wishes them well. Then he heads back to the top of the steps, gives a quick look around the room to see that nothing has changed, and then he heads out the door and down the streets towards Bulstrode’s home. Or more specifically, to the home of his neighbor.

Feel free to stop me if something significant has managed to change in the upstairs room. I’ll just assume that nothing has in order to keep the pace moving along.

I don’t mind rushing things. But Doragh would be as thorough as he can be. He would check with other neighbors to see if any of them could provide the same information or if they could tell him where to find the neighbor. He would probably also check into Bulstrode’s home, since he is there right now. But, neighbors first.

If you need to end the scene quickly, you can just do a quick post of whatever I manage to find and then let me know that the rest of my searches prove fruitless and I’ll head back to the meeting place for the group.

Doragh finds the neighbor at home. He says he has known Bulstrode his whole life, and always known him as a hard-working man who pays his debts. It’s a wonder he outgrew his childhood rages. The neighbor swears he hasn’t seen Bulstrode hurt a small animal since he was a child. Bulstrode and his wife kept to themselves, but that’s what makes good neighbors, isn’t it?

So, 2 things then.
1) What was the weird change in him for the past year since his wife and daughter died?

2) Would Doragh find anything from a quick walk-through of Bulstrode’s home?

I think if I have the answers to those two questions, I’ll be ready to join back up with the group. The quick walk-through would only allow me to see anything unusual that wasn’t carefully hidden. So if there’s something strange that got left out, or if Albrecht had revealed something and left it in the open, then I would notice. But otherwise, he wouldn’t find anything because he wouldn’t be searching or moving things really.

1. After his wife died, he started coming out at odd hours and having visitors over at strange hours. Unseemly behavior for a neighbor. He also stopped taking part in the neighborhood feasts. For years, the houses on the street would pool their leftovers at the end of the week and cook a big meal from it for everyone to share. He stopped attending. Everyone assumed it was out of grief so they left him alone.

1. After his wife died, he started coming out at odd hours and having visitors over at strange hours. Unseemly behavior for a neighbor. He also stopped taking part in the neighborhood feasts. For years, the houses on the street would pool their leftovers at the end of the week and cook a big meal from it for everyone to share. He stopped attending. Everyone assumed it was out of grief so they left him alone.